


Lunae Testimonuim

by Elysya



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Never Met, Assassin AU, Celebrity!Kurt, KPRB, Klaine, Klaine Prompt Reverse Bang, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2018-10-28 02:50:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10822191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elysya/pseuds/Elysya
Summary: Jesse St. James lives his life thinking everything is owed to him, so when his distorted plan to lend a big role in his first Broadway production fails, and the role goes to someone who's definitely less experienced than Jesse, he enacts plan B: hiring an hitman in order to have his competition blown away before the opening night.Kurt Hummel finds himself in a coffee shop with a cute guy after he received the most unexpected and beautiful role of his short career. He's happy because finally life is giving him a chance at everything he wanted from New York: success, and (maybe, hopefully) love.These two stories have a particular element in common: the hitman, and the guy Kurt is having coffee with, Blaine Anderson.





	1. The Mad Hatter's Crisis

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, everyone! This is my first fic ever for a Klaine ReverseBang, I must admit I'm a bit nervous. Today I'm posting the prologue of the prologue, if you con call it that, just to give you a taste of what's coming. The next chapter will be out between tomorrow and the day after, after that look forward for a second story in the ReverseBang at the end of May.  
> Now on to the awesome people who made this story possible: @lilyvandersteen who beta'd my work and put up with my anxieties over everything; and gisellesdoodles on tumblr who created the beautiful piece of art that inspired this fic, and you can find it in the tumblr masterpost on my blog: londonsbridge.tumblr.com.

 

**J** esse St. James lived his life thinking that everything he had was owed to him, as if the universe had made a terrible mistake by damning him to life in his family and so it had to repair this great inaccuracy by making sure he always had the best in life. 

At the age of eight, Jesse already showed how much he excelled in the performing arts by winning the elementary school’s talent showcase with a moving cover of All By Myself; as a gift for this achievement, his parents - utter idiots when it came to beautiful things such as music, or so Jesse always said - made sure he received the best training one could hope for, or at least they hired the best vocal coach and dance experts Lima had, who were nowhere near Broadway level, but Jesse never complained. 

His journey to success began the moment Mrs. Corcoran clapped eyes (and ears) on him, declaring he was the most promising student in all Carmel High and making him head of Vocal Adrenaline, the best show choir in all America, at the age of fifteen. 

More than twenty years later, Jesse was auditioning for one of the most tricky parts a person of his vocal range could ask for: Jack from  _ Into The Woods _ .

He had auditioned for that particular role knowing it would display how humble a man he was, but he hoped the casting director would notice his handsomeness and offer him to read for Prince Charming, a part that fitted him far better than Jack, had more songs and far better scenes.

He could already picture the moment they would ask him to take Charming. He would start with, “Oh no, but I’m not worthy! He’s such a strong character. But if you insist…” and accept the part after praising the writers. Like Mrs. Corcoran always said, he had to make sure the important people felt appreciated even if he didn’t appreciate them at all.

Unlike many others, Jesse didn’t go away after his try-out. He sat at the far end of the theater and watched as the rest of the candidates - his enemies - made their way to the stage. There were three unimportant boys between the age of eighteen and twenty-five, who would have done an average job as Jack, but no-one who would be good for Charming. Jesse grinned - his plan was working just as he wished. 

“Kurt Hummel, would you come out, please?” The casting director announced the name of a boy around Jesse’s age. He was more of a man than any other who had crossed that stage before him: long, slim figure and characteristic clothes that caught the eye even from where Jesse was sitting at the far end of the theater. His voice was high and clear, he had a good vocal range, and obviously he had had some vocal training. 

As soon as he belted out the final note, Jesse knew he would see that kid again, maybe even beside him, playing Jack in the play. He didn’t care all that much who he was working with as long as he got what he wanted, so he shrugged and got up to leave, but the producer’s voice brought him to a halt.

“I have a question for you, young man. Do you think your vocal range can reach a few bars lower than what you just sang?”

There was no answer, but Jesse could see the man nodding anxiously.

“How about you come back next week - same time, same day - and show me? Would you like to bring me  _ Agony _ ?”

“But that’s a Charming song…” the guy replied. His talking voice was as high as his singing voice, and Jesse had to stop himself from raising an eyebrow at his naiveness.

The director laughed into the microphone, his deep voice filling every corner of the theater. For Kurt that laugh meant nothing but good things, for Jesse it meant catastrophe. “I know.”

“Oh, you mean. Oh. Oh. Sure, yeah. Absolutely. I- sure.” He was hyperventilating. Jesse rolled his eyes in annoyance. What a brat.

Kurt left the stage with a spring in his step. Jesse was feeling a bit unsure. They hadn’t given him a callback, and they sure hadn’t asked him to read for anything other than Jack. The director, old man that he was, had just nodded his head and thanked him with an air of finality. Jesse decided there had been a misunderstanding. He made his way to the table where all the production crew was seated.

“I don’t usually do this,” he never did it, he never had to go and beg for a role, “but I was wondering if you could give me an opinion on my performance.”

The director looked around at his colleagues, who nodded their silent approval to whatever was going on that Jesse wasn't aware of, and then he spoke, “We don’t think you’re suited for the role of Jack. He’s a young boy."

Jesse had reached the age of thirty, yes, but he didn’t understand how they couldn’t see he was perfect for Charming. That was the whole plan, why didn’t they see it? 

He got out of the auditorium with rage filling his vision. The director had given him the full “Sorry, but we think you’re not good enough” speech, the one he’d had to say a hundred times to people trying out for Vocal Adrenaline. He knew it by heart and hearing it said to him had been like a punch to the guts. His plan would have worked perfectly if not for that skinny little prat who ruined everything. 

_ He  _ should have gotten a callback for Charming,  _ he _ should be the one singing on that stage. He deserved his big break in the Broadway world. Mrs. Corcoran always said he was the best of the best. Why couldn’t those asinine people see that? That Kurt was young, inexperienced and about as manly as a pink dress. Surely, he had had some kind of recommendations.

Jesse was sure that guy didn’t deserve the role, and if he could score it by playing dirty, Jesse could do the same.


	2. Alice Falls Into The Rabbit Hole

**P** amela Anderson had always known what her husband’s real occupation was, but she had never cared, because the love she felt for the man was stronger than everything she could have ever hoped of feeling. 

She was eighteen when Andrew came into her life. He was six years older and many people told her he was using her, that she was too blind to see what was right in front of her. Pamela was charmed by his wit and expensive presents, his silk words covering up the knife always hidden in his pocket. She didn’t listen to anyone’s warnings.

She allowed him to touch her, to love her, to take everything there was to take, while she tried to pretend the hands that were branding their mark on her skin weren’t tainted with the blood of dozens of people.

They got married the year of her nineteenth birthday, when Pam told him she was pregnant. Andrew didn’t love her enough to ask her to marry him for himself, just enough to want to spare her the shame of being a single mother. 

Cooper was born exactly eight months after the ceremony. His blue eyes, sharp and awake, judged Andrew from the first moment he held his son in his arms, as if the baby already knew what his father was up to in the dark of night and hated him for all the bad things he had done.

Andrew never cared a lot about Cooper - he made him feel like he needed to have a conscience, and Andrew had given that up a long time ago. 

As the years passed and Cooper got older, Andrew made sure to stay as far away from the house as he could, always making sure his family got the money from his jobs in cash. This way, he provided Pamela and his son with a big home and all the luxuries a queen could ask for.

On the rare nights that Andrew was home, Pam tried to have another child to fix what was left of their relationship. She thought that if Cooper had made him so distant, then another would make him come back into her arms. 

Blaine Devon Anderson was eight years younger than his brother, and he admired his father, following him around like a shadow from the moment he learned how to walk.  _ This one _ , Andrew told himself,  _ this one I could grow to love. For Pam. _

Andrew came back home and learned to care for Cooper for Blaine’s sake. A child, when it wants to, can make miracles come true. They moved to another town, far away from the sparks of New York. Westerville was far smaller, less glamorous, but they fit in just fine.

No one in all Ohio ever learned that Andrew Anderson was a hitman; no one, not even Pamela, knew he was teaching his younger son, under the cloak of night, how to be like him.

Blaine, like every child does, eventually came of age. He was a strong young man with a steady hand and watchful eyes. His father was proud of him; his mother saw great darkness in his soul, but never mentioned it. He was her son, and for that, she loved him more than her own life. Cooper was already gone when his brother turned eighteen. He had left the house with a kiss to his mother's forehead and a promise to send her cards whenever he could.

Andrew died, as was to be expected, and when a story ends another begins; Blaine took his weapons, his place, his job and his old apartment in New York. Two years later, that darkness his mother saw in him had taken over the gleeful boy he used to be, turning him into a shadow of his father, as was to be expected. 

His latest job was going to be hard, he already knew that. A rich, spoiled man, Jesse St. James, had called him saying that there was this man who had stolen his part in a Broadway musical and he needed him gone before opening night in three months. This one didn’t just want Blaine to kill the target, he wanted to make him suffer and confess how he had reached the top, who he had slept with, what his secrets were; to do that - his current boss had said - Blaine needed to make sure the guy fell in love with him, deep and hard, so when the betrayal would come he would feel more helpless and destroyed than Mr. St. James had felt when the role hadn’t been given to the right person, a.k.a. himself. 

It was a petty motive. Blaine would have punched the guy right in the face if he wasn’t paying a six-zero check to have this Kurt Hummel removed. Blaine wasn’t going to say no to that amount of money, and he was good at what he did, so he set up a fake identity for himself to go with the fake life he was going to lead for the next months, and researched everything he needed to know about his target.

Kurt always got coffee at the same hour, in the same place, so it wasn’t hard to find him, since he posted a picture of the queue, or his cup, or whatever struck his fancy on Instagram almost every time. Blaine could recognize - aside from all the slightly homophobic comments Jesse had made when they had talked - that Kurt was an attractive man; being with him for a few months wouldn’t be too difficult. It was the first time he had to go so deep for an assignment, but he could do it. He knew he could.

Blaine spotted his target when he was about to reach the doors of the coffee shop. He walked straight ahead and the two bumped into each other, causing coffee to spill on Kurt’s scarf and coat. 

“Oh, my god!” Blaine faked innocence, his eyes wide. He took some tissues from his bag to try and fix the damage. “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t look where I was going! Oh my god!”

Kurt took the tissue from his hand. Dabbing the scarf gently,  he said, “Oh, don’t worry. There is little anyone could do to ruin my day.” 

“I’ll make it even better!” Blaine said, going back and forth on the balls of his feet. He had never done such a thing, and he felt a little out of his depth playing the part of the dopey flirty guy. “Maybe we could go inside and I could buy you a coffee? To make up for the one I just spilled on you?”

Kurt looked him over from head to toe, considering the proposal. He nodded with an appreciative smile. Blaine was sure he was checking out his clothes. Kurt had a knack for style, going by the way he dressed and the tweets he sent from Vogue.com.

“How do I know you’re not a serial killer, or worse, a frat boy?” Kurt teased. 

“I think you will have to find out for yourself.”

Blaine soon found out the first part of the job was going to be easy: Kurt talked mostly about Broadway, although that may have had something to do with the fact that he was still high on excitement from getting the part he didn’t think he’d deserve, but his interests were many, and it looked like he had opinions on practically every subject known to man, so Blaine’s lack of knowledge about the sparkly world of theater wasn’t going to be an issue. 

He even felt confident enough to reveal the truth, “To be honest, I’ve never really seen a musical before.” 

“What?!” Kurt was shocked. His eyes widened in a comical manner, and he quite literally jumped on his chair. Blaine didn’t understand how someone could be upset over something so trivial.

The first thing his father had taught him was to always make up a lie that resembled reality, so that it would be easier to keep track of it. In this new identity Blaine had carved out for himself, he worked at a nightclub part-time (not the kind of place Kurt would like, but the perfect excuse for disappearing at odd hours should some other, quicker, job become available), but he didn’t actually need the extra money because his family was helping him pay rent, so since the owner of the club was a friend of his, the work nights were flexible; his pretend family was pretty uptight and they kept him in a bubble inside his posh house that never really felt like a home, which was partly true, but Kurt didn’t need to know the complete story, just what sufficed so he could pity Blaine a little, and get closer to him.

“Well, I never watched a lot of TV, really. It wasn’t- my home wasn’t like that.” 

“Like what? From the twenty-first century? Are you some kind of time traveller?”

“No, not time travelers, just… sheltered, I guess.”

“Could have fooled me, with the bowtie and the hair-gel. You’re like… a mini movie star straight out of the fifties.”

Blaine shrugged. He would have liked to have added a blush so he could maintain the image of a bashful young man, but he didn’t know how to do that on command. He bowed his head instead. After he’d taken a good look at his cup, the contents of which had gotten cold after all the time that had passed without either of them getting a refill, he mumbled, “You could teach me. About Broadway, that is.”

Kurt raised an eyebrow, waiting for whatever was about to come next.

“I mean, if you don’t think this is totally creepy, and you probably had places to be - I just came onto you.”

“It wasn’t creepy. You’re nowhere near creepy. I’ve had creepy, Blaine. Trust me.” Kurt rolled his eyes. He took a sip of his mocha but immediately pushed the cup away as if it was poisoned. 

Blaine knew it was probably just cold, just like his own, but Kurt’s dramatic reaction amused him.

They spent a lot of time talking about everything and nothing. Blaine realized that they would have hit it off even if he wasn’t presenting another version of himself, and he thought about that even while he was going back to his apartment, after Kurt had given him his number and he had reached the subway. 

He was two stops away from his own when the disposable phone he had bought to stay in contact with Jesse started to beep. Blaine took it out of his pocket without giving it much of a thought. He almost rolled his eyes, but he reminded himself that whenever people were around, he needed to put on a show, so he smiled and greeted the man on the other side of the phone with a friendly “Hey!”

“ _ Hello, Anderson. Everything all right _ ?” Jesse sounded relaxed, like he didn’t have a care in the world, not like a person who was talking to their hired hitman. Blaine admired his composure.

“Yeah, everything is great. He is… great. Thanks for introducing us,” Blaine said in a dreamy voice, he added a sigh at the end for good measure. The old lady beside him who had heard the conversation smiled his way, then turned her head to look at the woman sitting next to her. Blaine felt bad for just a split second.

“ _ I’m sure he was. Has he already put out? Did you find out something about how he managed to get my role? _ ” The other man was eager to know every little detail. Blaine could tell despite his apparent calmness.

“I will tell you everything once I get home. We only just met. Slow down.” To anyone in the subway, Blaine was talking about his date to a nosy friend. He knew no one could have possibly seen through his ruse, and yet there was one blonde girl about his age staring at him from the other side of the car. She made Blaine feel like she had every little secret he had so carefully kept hidden from the world in her hand, which made him feel exposed, and that was something he really didn’t like.

“ _ Okay, you’re acting weird. Ditch the phone, buy a new one next week. I’ll call you around the same time, same day _ .” Jesse took a moment, probably to make sure he was still alone and safe. “ _ Remember, you have two months. Fuck him and dump him, just like we agreed. _ ”

Having to keep the happy façade he had put on was hard when Jesse was talking that way. Blaine knew how hard it was to have to deal with being gay in a world that doesn’t think you’re normal. Being born in Ohio meant he’d had to battle his way through life outside of the closet with gritted teeth. Every time they spoke, Blaine felt less indifference towards Jesse and more pure disgust for the man.

“Talk to you later, bye.” Blaine put the phone back in his pocket, ready to dump it as soon as he reached a trash can.

The girl was still looking at him. She wasn’t too obvious - someone else wouldn’t have noticed - but Blaine was observant, so it wasn’t hard for him to spot an amateur at work. He got down one stop earlier, and the girl waited five seconds before she started to follow him into the crowd. He pretended like he hadn’t seen her and snuck into a random condo when someone opened the door to get in. 

The girl stood at the other side of the sidewalk. She sat down on a bench and waited a few minutes, then she got up, gave one last glance to the building, and turned back towards the station. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter came a little later than intended, sorry for that!   
> I wanted to thank you all for the comments I got from one simple prologue, people reblogging the post on tumblr and saying they stopped reading glee fics or haven't in a while but they want to read this story because they find it good has brought a smile to my face more times than I can count. The masterpost reached 100+ notes in little over 24 hours and they keep coming! For someone who just joined tumblr and doesn't really have followers from the glee world this is really something.


	3. Never Take Advice From The Caterpillar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this took so long to publish! I swear, I'm a mess even when I have stuff already written, but this chapter is way longer than the other two so I hope you can forgive me? Pretty please?

**S** aying that Kurt was anxious for his first rehearsal was an understatement. He had sung his part in _ Agony  _ at least twenty times in the days leading up to it, holding the sheet music and dancing around the living room to the displeasure of his roommate. Bless her soul, she hadn’t told him to shut up or straight up move, even if Kurt was sure he was interfering with her studying.

The director was there in the auditorium when they all arrived to try the first scenes. He gave the whole cast a pep talk and bid them good luck for their work. After that, he sat on a stool and looked at them while the cast tried the prologue.

It had been two weeks since they had called Kurt to say  _ Charming _ was his, the same day he had met Blaine. That afternoon, when he returned to the loft after their coffee, he had told his roommate he felt like the world was smiling down on him for once. 

Blaine was wonderful. They had met twice after the accident that had brought them together: the first time Blaine had insisted on another coffee date, because he didn’t have time to meet for dinner, and the second time they had gone to a restaurant. They had agreed it was a date and behaved accordingly, ending the night with a sweet kiss that still made Kurt smile whenever he thought about it. That had been two days ago. They had texted since then, but hadn’t managed to find a meeting point for a second date yet.

While the girl interpreting the role of Cinderella blasted her high note in the middle of the prologue, Kurt’s phone lit up, and Blaine’s name appeared on the screen. He had told himself he wouldn’t get distracted during his first big Broadway rehearsal, but the temptation was too strong.

_ You said rehearsal is at the auditorium behind nyu? _ _  
_ _ Blaine. _

**Yes, why?**

_ Checking _

Kurt was about to reply when the director put a hand on his shoulder and smiled at him, urging for Kurt to follow him to another part of the theater. If it wasn’t for the sweet face the old man had, Kurt would have thought he was about to get murdered. 

They reached the back of the stage, where a beat box sat on the floor. The director reached for it and said, “Can you sing me  _ Agony _ , please?”

Kurt was not prepared. He had studied his part, but he’d thought he would get a little bit of warning before having to burst into song. He hadn’t even sung his scales, he hadn’t warmed up his voice. He stood still in the middle of the space, hugging his chest with his arms. “I just need a moment to…”

“Just do it. Trust me.” He turned the beat box on, the first notes of the song belted out, and Kurt could do nothing but wait for his cue to enter. Once he began, the rest came easily enough. The piece was low, and he had needed a little bit of extra practice to make sure to hit all the right notes, but he was happy with the result. It was a good starting point. 

When the song died down, the director did nothing but watch him as he worried his hands and just waited for something to do, something to say, a cue that told him he had been as good as he had been during his callback.

“I want you to know something,” the older man started. “You are my bet.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“You are my bet. I’m sure you know we are not the kind of people anyone savvy would cast to play Prince Charming.” Kurt had never looked at the man closely, but when he pointed it out, he could see they were fairly similar in the most odd way: the other man was a little too much on the short side, his nose too big for his face and his voice high, just like Kurt’s, even if not quite as pitched. Probably, it had grown deeper with age. 

“So why didn’t you offer me a different role if you didn’t think I was good for Charming, or why didn’t you just send me home?” It felt good to say those things aloud, he had tried talking to his roommate about it, but it just hadn’t felt right. She wouldn’t understand.

“Because I was you, Kurt. I know how it is to always feel like you are never going to be manly enough. I saw something in you, you are good. And you’re gonna nail this, I know you will.” The director put a warm hand on Kurt’s shoulder. “I wanted to let you know, that’s all, you can go back to rehearsal now. And put your phone away,” he added in a playful voice, but Kurt still felt like he was getting scolded by a teacher back in high school.

“Thank you, sir. I promise I won’t let you down.”

“Call me Flynn.”

Kurt nodded once. “Flynn. I’ll have to get used to it.”

After the impromptu performance at the back of the auditorium, Flynn said his goodbyes, picked up his things and left so that the actors could work without distractions. Kurt felt more and more confused as the day dragged by, even while he was trying out a random scene with Cinderella, his mind was racing to the million things he didn’t understand about the play, about his role in it. He knew he would end up talking to his roommate about what was bothering him. She would offer some objective insights and everything would turn out fine in the end, but at the moment, he was stuck. 

At the end of the day, while he put on his coat to head home, he was unsatisfied with his performances, tired, and cranky. He just wanted to head home and throw himself headfirst into bed, but he hadn’t considered someone lurking under a streetlight not far away, waving at him.

Kurt took a closer look at the figure, squinting his eyes. He thought he knew who it was, but he wanted to make sure, so he walked to the other side of the street in long strides until he could finally yell “Blaine!” with total certainty.

He stopped right in front of Blaine. He didn’t know what the best way of greeting him would be; if a hug was too friendly, if a kiss would be too forward. He was new to the dating thing, after all.

Blaine didn’t waste time before he got up on his toes and kissed him on the cheek, smiling brightly. “Surprise!” he announced, clapping his gloved hands together. 

“What are you doing here?” Kurt asked, his voice more high-pitched than usual, his cheeks turning pink for a variety of reasons. He could feel the blood warming up the tip of his ears and damned, not for the first time, his complexion. 

“I wanted to see you! And I know you must be tired, so we can do whatever you want, I promise.”

Kurt looked at his watch. He considered the time it would take to go back home if they decided to actually go out and maybe have a late dinner, and shivered at the thought of how late it would get. “Do you mind coming with me to my apartment? I promise the commute is long enough that we can catch up,” he proposed with an hopeful smile on his face. He really wanted to spend time with Blaine. He had missed him, even if that sounded crazy because they had only met about a month prior, but as his dad always said,  _ when you know _ …

“Of course, sure! And maybe I’ll get to meet your mysterious roommate,” Blaine hinted, referring to all the stories Kurt had told him about the girl he lived with without ever showing him a picture or anything else that would make her feel real, that would help Blaine put a face to the name. He was worried the girl might compromise his mission. She was an obstacle, someone else he had to convince of something that wasn’t real.  

They started to walk toward the subway station hand in hand. Kurt talked about his first rehearsal, the chat he had had with Flynn and the way he finally felt like he had reached a turning point in his life. He spoke with such reverence of the theatre world, his eyes sparkling every time he mentioned the stage. Blaine couldn’t help but notice the way Kurt’s whole face lit up, the way he tried to express himself better with his hands, and all the times he would interrupt himself to say something along the lines of, “It was so amazing!” or, “I can’t believe I actually did that!” 

Watching Kurt was so mesmerizing that Blaine didn’t even notice they had gotten on the subway already. He forced himself to get back in the game, and focus on the task at hand: it was late, they were on their way to Kurt’s apartment; he couldn’t miss the chance to get that much closer to him. Jesse’s words echoed inside his brain, “ _ Fuck him and dump him, just like we agreed.”  _

“Blaine! Hey, are you here with me?” Kurt squeezed Blaine’s hand. His face was a bit worried. Blaine realized he had zoned out for far too long. He swallowed hard.

“Sorry, just a bit tired. What did you say?”

“I said that I’ve been talking for half an hour about the wonders of Broadway and I haven’t heard a single word from you. Tell me, what have you been doing the past days?”

_ Planned the best way to kill you, I figured poison will be good enough.  _ Blaine took his time with the answer, pretending to yawn. “Oh, nothing important, you know. Work, home. The usual.” He realized as soon as the words came out of his mouth that his excuse was poor and lacking, but he could blame it all on his - fake - sleepiness, it would also help in getting Kurt to ask him to stay for the night. 

Kurt was about to say something, probably a witty retort about how off he seemed, when they reached their stop, so he focused on steering Blaine between the crowd and he forgot what he was about to say.

They reached the door to Kurt’s apartment after ten more minutes where Blaine had managed to steer the conversation back to safe topics. Kurt started to look for his keys so they could get inside, but he couldn’t find them between all the mess that was inside his bag.

“You will find them before tomorrow, right?” Blaine teased, nudging him with his shoulder.

Kurt rolled his eyes and raised his head long enough to scold Blaine, “I told you, my bag is filled with all the basics. We’ve been through this already.” 

Blaine smiled, but said nothing. He knew where to stop the banter before it turned into a fight. He occupied himself with looking around the hall for any possible trouble. He was halfway through checking if he recognized the neighbours’ names (Kurt didn’t exactly live in the best part of town) when the door they were standing in front of opened; on the other side was a very familiar blonde girl, around Blaine’s age, with long legs clad in sweatpants and her arms crossed in front of her chest. She had an amused smile on her face that barely faltered when she saw Blaine.

“I heard you two talking - Kurt has kind of a unique voice. If I hadn’t opened the door you would have stood there forever,” she explained. Her voice was soft, calm, almost soothing. 

Kurt sighed loudly. “I was about to find the keys!”

“Yeah, sure.”

Kurt noticed that Blaine was still standing there next to him without saying a single word, just assessing the situation, so he stepped aside and he gestured between the two. “Uhm, Blaine, this is Quinn, my roommate. Quinn, Blaine.”

The two shook hands. Their faces were tense, but none outside them could have noticed - Kurt might have, but he was far too tired.

They stepped into the apartment. Kurt sighed once he’d gotten rid of his coat and bag. “I need to take a shower, but you can stay here if you want and we’ll watch a movie,” he said, looking at Blaine. 

He didn’t hesitate before he agreed. He had an extra motive to stay the night: find out something about the mystery girl from the metro. He had the feeling she would be a hard nut to crack, he would have needed at least a few hours alone with her. She was an amateur, but she was not  _ that _ bad. “Sure.” He nodded. “I’ll wait here.”

Once he and Quinn were left alone, sitting on either side of the dinner table, they tried to size the other up, like lions ready to engage in a fight. While inside they were trying to figure out a way to make the other crack, from the outside, Quinn was still keeping up the act by behaving like the perfect host.

“Do you want anything to drink?” she asked. Without waiting for an answer, she got up and turned around toward the cupboards. She opened one of the cabinets to reveal several varieties of tea; surely most of it belonged to Kurt. The thought almost made Blaine smile - not a smirk but a genuine smile. He couldn’t remember the last time he had done something like that. He stored up the feeling so he could come back and analyze it later, for the moment he had to focus solely on Quinn. 

“You can cut the crap, you know?” he said. His voice was still the one he kept around everyone else: calm, reassuring. His hands rested folded on top of the table. 

Quinn pretended like she hadn’t heard him, “We practically only have green tea. I need to go grocery shopping.” 

“Stop it! I know you were the one following me a few weeks ago.” He was starting to lose his temper.

Quinn turned back around to face him. Now that she had the confirmation that Blaine had seen her following him, she could be completely honest with him. Her hands were gripping the stove so tightly her knuckles were turning white, but her face was still and her back was straight. “He might hear,” she said gesturing to the bathroom.

“Hear what? That you kept him from who knows what kind of secret?” Blaine asked. He realized he had exaggerated a bit, so he tried to keep his composure. He just didn’t want Quinn to know he was acknowledging her warning.

“I could say the same, Blaine. If that’s even your name.”

“It is,” he replied instantly. She made a face at that.

A few seconds passed without either of them saying anything, then Quinn proposed, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”

Blaine gave a quick glance to the bathroom door: he could hear the faint sound of Kurt’s voice belting out a Broadway song, or at least he thought it was a Broadway song. “No. No, I’m good.”

Quinn shrugged, “Thought so. I’ll be making some tea anyway.”

Kurt found them half an hour later, still sitting at the dinner table. Quinn was finishing her cup of tea, which was starting to get cold, but she didn’t seem to mind all that much; Blaine was eyeing her from time to time. The air in the room was heavy with unspoken conversations, and Kurt’s good mood was about to disappear when he realised the two people who were closer to him than anyone else in the whole of New York weren’t hitting it off so well, after all. 

Fortunately, his presence made the rest of the night a lot easier: Quinn and Blaine rarely talked directly to each other. They ordered takeout, settled a few pillows and a blanket on the floor so they could all sit comfortably, but Kurt was always in between. Even when he wanted to give them more space to talk to each other, one of the two would find a way to make sure he was right where the wanted him so they could avoid touching anyone who wasn’t him, even by mistake.

At the end of the movie - West Side Story, at least the night had been a first step in his mission to educate Blaine about the wonders of musicals - they put everything back where it belonged. Blaine, always the gentleman, helped clean up the mess they had made on the floor before going to grab his coat.

Kurt took a look at the clock: it was awfully late, and he didn’t want anything bad to happen to Blaine - who knew what kind of people were taking the subway after ten o’clock - so he did a foolish thing. 

“Blaine, wait!” 

Blaine turned around, faking surprise.

“Would you - I mean, it’s late and this is not the friendliest neighborhood, so... Would you like to stay here tonight?”

Blaine almost grinned, and he didn’t try to hide it. It could have passed as his way to reassure Kurt he was totally okay with the idea, while in reality he was gloating because his plan was working out just as he had planned. It was a shame Quinn was still in the house, that cut out the chance to complete the mission.

For some reason, though, the thought of killing Kurt and getting the whole thing over with wasn’t as appealing as it had been the previous day. Blaine ignored the thought in favor of taking off his coat, putting it back on the hook by the door and following Kurt to his area of the apartment. It was weird that they didn’t have any walls. The whole place seemed designed to make sure they couldn’t have any kind of privacy.

“You can take the bed, I’ll just - take a few things and sleep on the couch.” Kurt was rambling about how it was totally fine, he didn’t have to worry about anything, and if he needed something for his night routine the creams Kurt used where on the nightstand. 

Blaine chuckled. The suave, composed man he had grown to know as Kurt had been turned into a fumbling mess just because a boy was near his bed. He wondered if something like that had already happened for him, or if this was his first time. 

“Kurt, can you stop?” he asked, more amused than anything else.

He did stop. He froze, in fact, with a pillow in hand, right next to the bed.

“We are adults, we are in a relationship. I think we can share a bed for one night. Right?”

Kurt’s cheeks went flaming red, then his ears and suddenly his whole face was burning. “Yeah. Sure,” he muttered, putting the pillow back where it belonged.

“But if it is too much for you, then I’ll take the couch.” Blaine hoped it wasn’t too much, he wanted the night to go as he had planned. What would he tell Jesse otherwise?

“No, it’s good. I’m fine with it,” Kurt assured him. He didn’t look fine, he looked completely out of his depth. “I’ll go change in the bathroom.” Without saying another word, he picked up his pajamas from a drawer and rushed to the other side of the curtains that signed his bedroom space.

Blaine was left alone, with all the things that belonged to Kurt on bright display. He could easily roam through all his possessions to find anything that would make him uncomfortable, or something that would reveal more about who he was so Blaine could model his fake persona around something that would connect the two of them further; instead, he went straight for the drawers where he knew Kurt’s clothes were stashed away - at least the ones who didn’t need to be hung up - and took an old t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants that were too long for him so he could sleep more comfortably.

Kurt came back into the bedroom looking more like himself, he took one look at Blaine’s chosen attire and his eyes went wide again. 

“I hope you don’t mind, I just saw you take -” Blaine started to apologize, but Kurt stopped him when  he started to laugh. “What’s so funny?” he asked with a little smile of his own.

“It’s just - I never realized how short you are,” Kurt gestured to Blaine’s feet; they were almost completely covered by the hems of the sweatpants he had borrowed, and the T-shirt was a tad too long, too.

“Very funny.” Blaine took a good look at himself. “Just wait until I get the gel out of my hair before you start giggling.” He tried to act like he was pissed, but the whole situation was too ridiculous to remain serious.

They finally settled into bed a few minutes later, after Kurt had thoroughly touched Blaine’s curls to make fun of him. The jokes had eased the situation, they both felt more comfortable than before. Somehow they had fallen into step, until they were just lying on the bed, facing each other and holding hands. 

“Can I ask you a question?” Kurt started when Blaine was about to drift off. He’d had some idea for the night, what was it that he was supposed to do? He wasn’t so sure anymore. The comforter smelled like Kurt’s aftershave, he was warm and comfortable, and Kurt’s thumb moving slowly against his own hand wasn’t helping his concentration.

“Mm-hmm. What?” Blaine’s answer was barely a whisper, his eyes were still closed. He wanted to open them, but this was so much better. He sought out Kurt’s feet under the blankets to warm his toes. Kurt was warm, whereas Blaine’s feet were never warm.

“What was that all about with you and Quinn? Did she say something to you?”

Quinn’s name woke him up better than a cold shower would have. Blaine’s eyes popped open, and he suddenly realized what he had been doing: cuddling up to Kurt like a puppy. He was supposed to get him to sleep with him that night, but he must have lost the meaning of the words sometime between the moment his head touched the pillow and when Kurt’s warmth joined him under the covers. 

“No, she was nice, actually. She offered me tea.” It was a lie, Blaine knew it was a lie, and lies were what the whole mission was based on, so why did he care if he didn’t tell the truth? It wasn’t like he had been honest up until that point.

“Mh. Okay, I believe you.” Yes, that was the reason why Blaine minded so much; whatever he would say, Kurt would believe, because he trusted Blaine.

“Now it’s my turn, though.” The night had gone in a completely different direction, but he could still find out more about Kurt. Not everything was lost. “You never told me how rehearsal went.” 

Kurt’s eyes shone through the black curtain of the night, the faint light coming from the window on the other side of the room make him look like his whole body was lit with fire when he talked about his job. He was born to be on stage, Blaine realized it by the way he spoke about it.

“- and then the director called me backstage, and he said I was his bet. He offered me the role because he believes I can avenge all the guys like me.”

“The guys like you?”

“You know, those who look like I do, and sound like I do.”

Blaine furrowed his brows, he looked at Kurt’s face for a moment, trying to find anything wrong with it. “What’s wrong with those things? 

“Well, you know, usually they’d take someone more… masculine to play Charming,” he explained. He turned onto his back, releasing the hold he had on Blaine’s hand. The happy expression on his face was substituted by a faint hurt that dimmed the light in his eyes and made him look smaller, fragile somehow.

Blaine tried to get closer to him in anyway possible, putting his hands on Kurt’s chest and his chin on top of them. “I think you sound incredible.”

Kurt snorted. “You’ve never heard me sing.”

“The walls are thin, and the water doesn’t cover all the singing you were doing in the shower.”

Kurt stared at him, his mouth slightly open. He brought his hands to cover his face and muttered, “Oh, my God.” 

They both ended up giggling, and when they stopped, Blaine settled himself more comfortably, tucked against Kurt’s side. They were both about to fall asleep when he remembered something else from before. “Why were you so nervous before? About us sleeping in the same bed?” he said aloud, even if he didn’t mean to.

He could make out Kurt’s blush even in the dark. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been this intimate with a boy. It didn’t happen often in Middle of Nowhere, Ohio, so I guess I’m just not used to it.”

“But it did happen. Once, at least?” Blaine could understand how what they were doing felt more intimate than sex, just sharing a bed and your feelings with someone was a lot harder.

“Yeah. He was no Prince Charming, though.” Kurt raised up a finger, like he was making a point. “But it was hard being alone, and he was the only gay kid I ever met in Lima. He was bullied, he was… like me, in some ways.”

“Tell me about him?” Blaine asked. 

“Okay, uhm. I met him at a sheet music shop. He was… weird, actually. We went out for a few months, nothing serious, then I got the lead in the school musical and they wanted me to be more experienced, so my co-star and I decided we would just get it over with.That was just the stupidest reason ever, I know.” Kurt laughed at himself.

Blaine couldn’t help but smile, imagining a young Kurt seducing a boy just so he could act better was something he had never thought possible. “So you used the poor guy.” He hoped he wasn’t coming across as if he was judging Kurt; he had done far worse. He was doing far worse. 

“Oh no! It wasn’t just something I needed. I wanted to, and Chandler was my boyfriend. We had been talking about it for a while. It just happened, I guess. It’s not something I’m proud of.”

A heavy silence followed. Right after that, Kurt asked him, “It’s your turn. Tell me about your first.” They were both awake again, by then.

“You do realize this is a weird conversation to have now?” Blaine joked. He was trying to get back the easiness that had grown between them before, and luckily for him, he managed to make Kurt smile.

“You brought it up, mister. Go on.”

Blaine really didn’t want to talk about it. He couldn’t be honest without revealing his true identity, and it wasn’t a good tale to tell, it was just another job, or it had been in a bar? He didn’t even remember when or where or who. “He was no Prince Charming, either.” Of that he could be sure. “You are. My very own Prince Charming.” Blaine didn’t know where that cheesy line had come from, but he found it was more true than anything he had ever said during the whole night. It felt right, in a way it wasn’t supposed to.

“That’s not funny, Blaine. Make up a better joke.”

“No, I mean it.” He did. He realized, in that moment of pure honesty, that the reason why he felt so ashamed when he had to lie about the simplest things was because he didn’t want to lie to Kurt at all, he was starting to see all of Kurt and he wanted to show all of himself to him. Jesse had thrown him into the arms of a sweet, caring boy and he didn’t want to lose that. He didn’t want to lose Kurt, or the way he made him feel. He pushed himself up on one elbow, facing Kurt with what he hoped was the most sincere look he had ever given him.

Kurt stopped breathing for a second, Blaine was afraid he had actually killed him right when he didn’t intend to, but then Kurt kissed him, sweet and tender, and all of Blaine’s worries went away with every touch.

They had nothing more to say, Blaine wasn’t sure he could speak, not after realizing he had slowly but steadily grown fond of Kurt in a way he had never planned. He wasn’t going so far as to say he had fallen in love with him, but he could admit he was well on his way if things kept going the way they were, if they kept talking in hushed voices in the middle of the night, if Kurt was going to be his striking self every time they were together.


	4. The Talking Flowers Down In Wonderland

**B** laine had never known that a walk of shame could prove to be so satisfying. Usually when he went back home after being with a guy, he would be roaming the streets at odd hours, his clothes would be stained with blood; his body would be satisfied, but it would always leave him hollow somehow. He had never felt what it was like waking up beside someone he actually cared about. The reminder that, just a few hours before, he had been in bed with Kurt was enough to make him smile at the old ladies getting in the car with their grocery bags.

Reality hit soon after, when a phone that wasn’t his usual rang in his bag. It was Jesse.

Blaine wasn’t one to panic, he had been trained to be calm even in the worst circumstances, so he picked up the phone and answered with his usual cheerfulness, only he didn’t have to fake it. He stopped lying to Kurt, he could start lying to Jesse St. James. 

“ _ Hey there, gay-pal. _ ” Blaine winced at the homophobic subtext of that greeting. “ _ Talk to me. _ ” 

“It’s harder than I thought.”

“ _ Please tell me that’s a dick joke. _ ”

Blaine rolled his eyes. “No, it’s not. I just- I need more time.”

“ _ Jesus Christ. The musical opens in about a month, when do you think you are gonna find the time _ ?” Blaine could hear the sound of something shattering, considering the way Jesse was screaming it was probable that he had broken something in his fit of rage. “ _ Look, I can’t have him up on that stage. You have to do this before opening night. _ ”

“Okay.”

“ _ Don’t mess with me, Anderson. I’ll call you next week, keep the phone close to you. _ ”

Blaine closed the call and he slumped in his seat. He had to find a way to get rid of Jesse before opening night. He wouldn’t kill Kurt, that was not even in the question anymore; but Jesse was an hard man to find, and they had never met in person. It wouldn’t be hard to find out what he looked like, and even if he lived in Australia he had to at least try to track him down.

***

Blaine had locked himself in his apartment for the last two days, he hadn’t talked to anyone, or gone out to get groceries; he had been too preoccupied with finding out all he could about Jesse St. James to do something as trivial as eating, he didn’t keep anything edible in his fridge either way. He didn’t remember the last time he had stepped away from his computer for more than twenty minutes. He didn’t even know if Kurt had tried to contact him.

The revelation hit him suddenly when he was looking through Jesse’s facebook page to try and figure out where he lived at the moment - or, more likely, where he was spending the nights - so he took his phone and noticed three missed calls and five messages from Kurt, and ten calls from an unknown number. He was about to open Kurt’s chat to tell him everything was okay, when his computer received a notification. Blaine sighed and put the phone aside; there would have to be time for that later.

Just as he put his hands back on the keyboard a sound came from the other side of the house: someone was knocking on his door. Blaine froze. No one knew where he lived. It could be some old client of his dad’s who wanted to have a chat with him about something and didn’t know he was dead, but that didn’t seem likely: it had been several years now, and Blaine was sure all his contacts knew he had taken over. So whoever they were, it was Blaine they wanted to talk to.

He took one of his guns from under his bed, and moved stealthily to the door, trying not to make any noise as he approached the entrance to the apartment. 

He would watch from his spyglass, had he not taken it out years ago for fear someone might spy  _ inside _ his house. He had to open the door blindly, there was no other option.

Another ring. Whoever was on the other side must have been getting impatient. Not a good sign.

Blaine took a deep breath, he raised his gun and turned the door open with one quick movement, pointing the barrel to the stranger.

Waiting for him in the hallway was none other than Quinn. Her face was stoic while she waited for him to lower his weapon and calm down.

He did just that, taking a few deep breaths for good measure, too.

“What- why- how did you find me?” He had so many questions he had needed a few seconds to settle on one in particular.

Quinn rolled her eyes. “Doesn’t matter how. I'm here. Let me in.”

In wasn't as much a question as it was a command, but Blaine had no intention of moving away from his front door and let Quinn figure out all his secrets by entering the belly of the beast. He stood still.

She pushed him so hard with her palms he lost his balance, both from the force of the hit and the fact that he wasn't expecting something like that to happen. Quinn managed to make him move enough for her to sneak inside and close the door behind her.

She started to look around at her surroundings, taking in the empty hallway, sneaking glances to the poorly lit slices of rooms she could see behind the doors left ajar. She stopped right next to Blaine’s bedroom door; the only one that was actually closed, and the only one that actually kept all his secrets - all his life - behind it. Blaine held his breath, waiting for her to turn the knob and uncover everything he had been working on the past days, but she didn't. Somehow Quinn’s hand just hovered on the door before she turned around towards him and commented, “Cute,” in a sarcastic manner.

“What do you want?” Blaine asked, his hands crossed in front of his chest.

The girl retrieved her phone from her purse, she toyed with it for a few moments and then offered it to him. Kurt's contact was on the display.

“Call him.”

Blaine huffed a breath, he went to get his own phone - which was still lying on his bedroom’s floor - and announced, “I can call him myself, you know.”

Quinn grabbed his arm with her hand to stop him. The nails were digging in his flesh, not enough to cut it but more than enough to bruise it. Blaine had to grit his teeth in order to not give her the satisfaction of a reaction.

“No, you can't,” she said in a quiet voice. Blaine was sure she could be murdering someone bare-handed and she would still sound as if she was talking to a baby. 

“What?”

“You can't because he wouldn't answer you. He's too angry,” she explained. In that moment Quinn looked into Blaine's eyes, she saw how clueless he was and she wondered if he had ever had a successful relationship, or any relationship at all. She felt pity for him. 

“I haven't done anything,” Blaine stated, quite sure of himself.

“I know you usually take guys to bed and leave them the morning after without so much as a call, I guess it's just what you  _ know _ , but Kurt thought you were together. It really hurt him when you didn't call or text.” She shoved the phone back into his hands forcefully. “Call him. Even just to say it's over.”

Blaine blinked. He was trying to figure out everything Quinn had just told him, with little success; he had never even thought that not contacting Kurt could result in hurting his feelings, he had been trying so hard to save Kurt’s life that he hadn't thought of anything else. He felt awful, but at the same time he was actually grateful that Quinn was apparently a better spy than he was, otherwise who knew how many days would have passed before he figured out the best course of action.

She waited for him to bring the phone to his ear, when she heard the faint reply on the other side (“ _ Quinn? Is something wrong at the grocery store?” _ ) she walked off and out of the apartment. He could return her the phone when he came back to the loft and apologized in the right way, or he could keep it. She didn't really care, it was a disposable one anyway.

Blaine was confused by her behavior, but he didn't have the heart to question it further. He focuses solely on Kurt’s voice, which was growing frustrated as time passed without anyone answering his questions.

“Hey, it's - it's not Quinn. It's me.”

“ _ Oh.”  _ His tone changed from worried to annoyed more quickly than Blaine could have imagined. “ _ Look who the cat dragged in...” _

Blaine shut his eyes, he brought his hand up to cover his face and took a long, calming breath. He heard the judgment in Kurt’s voice loud and clear, it was like listening to his mother telling him he had to stop following in his father’s footsteps all over again. He had to remind himself he was in a very different situation, and that it wasn’t Pamela on the other side of the phone, in order to get his bearings. 

“I’m sorry.” He couldn’t come up with anything better to say than the truth. That was a first. 

Silence enveloped the house. Blaine was still standing in the middle of his narrow hall, and without Kurt saying anything he was momentarily left alone with his thoughts, which wasn’t exactly his favourite place to be, if he had to be honest with himself.

Kurt huffed out some air. The noise it made against the phone’s microphone bothered Blaine a little, but he managed to bear it. “ _ I hope you have some good excuse. Like some  _ really good _ excuse. _ ” 

Blaine laughed, but it was without any kind of glee or sentiment. It felt awkward, and he had never felt awkward when talking to Kurt. It bothered him more than he could admit. “What if my cat was sick with a weird infection and I had to drag him to a super-hospital underground with no reception?”

“ _ You don’t have a cat, Blaine. I’m gonna need a better one. _ ” A beat. “ _ A real one. Please? No jokes. _ ”

“Okay.” He started to lightly kick the wall socket with his feet to create the illusion of having more time to answer. “I went off radar these past few days because I had a family emergency and I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. I’m really, really sorry. I never meant to hurt you, I just-”

“ _ You didn’t think about it. _ ”

Caught red-handed. “I didn’t.” That much Blaine could offer, that little bit of truth. It needed to be enough for the time being. 

“ _ Quinn didn’t go to the grocery store, did she? _ ” Kurt asked, more to himself than to anyone else. He chuckled, unamused. For the first time since the beginning of their conversation Blaine could feel how dried out the other boy was, how his usually peppy voice was toned down, flat. Kurt was sad, and it was Blaine’s fault. 

If listening to him when he had had a bad day was so devastating to Blaine, how could he ever think of physically hurting Kurt? He knew he would never be able to do such a thing on purpose. 

“No, no she didn’t.”

“ _ How is it that she knows where you live, and I don’t? I should know. Right? _ ” Kurt kept talking, but he was having a one-way conversation. “ _ Are you even still in touch with your family? I never saw you send as much as a _ text _ to any of them. And by the way, how many people are we talking about? Do you have siblings? Are your parents even together? _ ”

“Kurt, slow down, I-” Blaine was feeling overwhelmed. The anger in Kurt’s voice set him on edge, and he felt like a little boy again: exposed, and powerless. He knew, rationally, that he could have hung up, stopping the flow of resentment coming his way; but he also knew he would have to return the phone sooner or later, and not letting Kurt vent would only worsen the situation. He needed to be strong, and take what he deserved.

“ _ I know so little about you, Blaine. I never realized. You’re such a mystery to me and I- I didn’t even think about it. _ ” Kurt’s voice faded away when he said,  _ “God, I was so stupid. _ ” He was about to hang up.

“Wait! Kurt, don’t!” Blaine had to scream to make sure he was being heard. 

“ _ What? _ ” Blaine had expected anger, he had expected Kurt to scream a bit more, but he was nowhere near ready to hear the emptiness in that word. He had said what he needed to say - what had most likely been swimming in his head for the past two days - and he had ended up completely numb.

“Can we meet up? So we can talk face to face? I feel like you’re just making up reasons to be angry right now.” 

“ _ Making up _ reasons?” That, Blaine realized, hadn’t been the smartest thing to say. “ _ Look, when you think I’m done making up reasons you can come to the loft yourself. You know when to find me. You know what I do during the day, I talked to you about it. Unlike you. _ ” It appeared Kurt had just that bit of snark left to make Blaine feel like he was the worst human alive. And, thinking about it, wasn’t that the truth? Wasn’t it the reason it had all gone to hell? 

Blaine recognized he had been too naïve to think they could have worked out after all. He was a hitman. He had been hired to kill Kurt. The person Kurt knew wasn’t real, it was all based on lies and deception. Even if he had been able to find and kill Jesse, he couldn’t just go back to his fake life and pretend nothing had happened. He saw that now.

On the other hand, Blaine was left with all those feelings, all that affection that he desperately needed to give Kurt, but couldn’t. His desire to be at Kurt’s side and care for him hadn’t vanished during the last days, if anything it had gotten stronger; and stronger yet after he had heard his voice again.

The only thing Blaine could do at the moment was stare at the wall.

He was alone. He would always be alone. He had known that for a long time, and the notion had never bothered him. Until it did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Growing up and having to do adult stuff sucks, guys. I had the worst weeks ever. Why did the Greeks invent schools? Couldn't they just eat fruits and chill?   
> This is the fourth chapter of the story, it's pretty short and I didn't publish it sooner because I didn't want to leave you hanging for too long when I noticed my schedule was going crazy. But don't fret! The story will go on soon (I hope?) and this situation will resole itself! (maybe?)   
> As always kudos to lilyvandesteen who helped me with the wordings and such of the story. You can see the fanart that inspired Lunae Testiomonium on candycanaries' tumblr (and maybe check out the rest of her art as well because it rocks) and on the first chapter of the story.
> 
> As for the people who told me they want more of Stars May Collide (the other story I wrote for KPRB - and I know, my titles are really orignal) don't despair! I don't know how many of you read this story but keep both eyes open, aye?


	5. Off With Her Head

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two more chapters to go! (and maybe - just maybe - an epilogue). I've been working on this Au on and off since January, I can't believe it's almost ove!  
> I'll stop with the teary comments and keep all the thanks for the last chapter, but anyway I want you to know that this time you're not gonna have to wait as long, I promise. ad yes, I know my promises aren't always kept but I swear you'll have the whole story before the end of July, mark my words into stone!
> 
> FYI, this chapter has been beta'd by me only so if you find any mistakes, you know who to blame!

**B** laine had been able to avoid talking to Jesse for more than a month now. The man kept calling every week, sometimes more than once in the same day, and Blaine would always ignore the disposable phone. 

He didn’t have time to deal with him, if Jesse wanted to talk to Blaine about something he would need to come and see him. A challenge face-to-face could lead to the revenge Blaine wanted for Kurt, or to Blaine’s total destruction; he didn’t really care either way.

He was standing in the building not far from the theater where Kurt was supposed to act on his opening night. He had rented a room just days before to enact his plan of watching over Kurt and - who knows - maybe even go inside the theater and watch him perform. The idea had taken its place in Blaine’s head for the last week and it wouldn’t leave him alone: seeing Kurt up on a real Broadway stage, in his natural habitat at last, would have been fantastic.

Blaine was sure Kurt’s eyes were going to sparkle under the spotlights the same way they did when he talked about the show. It was a spectacle in itself, and Blaine was nothing more than a moth drawn to the flame, powerless to resist the beauty in front of him.

At the same time he had some reservations, because he didn’t know if Kurt wanted him there at all and what if seeing him in the crowd made him lose his balance, or forget some lyrics? Blaine could never forgive himself if he was the reason Kurt messed up. 

His heart was torn in two. He knew it was his chance of finally apologizing, maybe even telling the truth. 

The clock struck five o’clock. He had one hour to decide if he was going to go or not.

Just as Blaine was about to go have a walk and clear his mind, his personal phone rang asking for his attention. Blaine picked it up as fast as he could. There weren’t many people who knew that numer. 

“Kurt,” he breathed out. 

What he received as answer was a snort and a chuckle.

“ _ Almost. Hey there, man. Having fun with your boyfriend? _ ”

“Jesse.”

“ _ Oh, you recognize my voice! I’m touched. I thought you had forgotten about me. I imagine you must be busy. Today is opening night, isn’t it? Is Kurt having some anxiety problems? _ ” The mocking in his voice was far from hidden, it was clear that he wasn’t pleased with the way things had turned out.

Blaine put a hand on his face to cover his expression from the outside world. He knew no one could see him, but being fragile had never been exactly his strong suit. He also didn’t know how Jesse had gotten his number, but that meant he was far closer than Blaine had anticipated. He had made the terrible error of underestimating his enemy.

That was the final round, and Blaine needed to be careful about what cards he showed. “Kurt is fine. I bet he’s gonna be great tonight.”

“ _ So I thought. _ ”

“I hope you’re gonna be there to see him. This is really, really important for him.”

Jesse was silent, which scared Blaine more than anything; it meant he was thinking, possibly about something dangerous. After a few moments he said, “ _ I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Oh, by the way, you are not gonna see a dollar from me, Anderson. Pay your room on Broadway with other people’s money, will you? _ ”

Blaine furrowed his brows. He went to the window and there he was: a man a little taller than he was; his short blonde hair messed up by the wind, a coat with the collar turned up, his smirk fixed in his face while he whispered on the phone.

Blaine heard, “ _ Hi, Anderson _ ,” through his own cell phone. He didn’t need further confirmation.

He left the phone on the first surface he found before he began to run toward the door. On his way down he noticed some people looking at him the wrong way, but that was the least of his problems; he rushed down the stairs to the front door of the hotel.

“Sir, may I be of service?” The receptionist stopped him when he was a few feet away from the glass door that separated him from Jesse St. James. The man was right on the other side of the street, Blaine could see his smirk. 

“Yes, by letting me go about my business, please!” he said scolding the young girl in front of him. 

She didn’t shake in her uniform like most men did when he used that tone, instead she squared her shoulders. “I’m sorry, but some clients have communicated concern over your rushed state. They walked over me saying, and I quote, that a crazy guy was fumbling down the stairs. Are you sure everthing is allright?” 

Blaine wasn’t looking at her anymore, his gaze was fixed on his target; he was sure his eyes were close to glowing red with fury, which wasn’t a particularly reassuring sign for the concerned receptionist. He tried to look calm and collected, but it didn’t work.

“It will be, soon.” He dodged the girl pushing her gently aside with one hand. “This ends today,” he muttered under his breath. 

Once he was finally out of the hotel, Blaine saw Jesse waving at him. He tried to walk across the street, but a car almost hit him, and he had to take a step back, meanwhile Jesse took his leave and disappeared in the crowd of people moving to the theaters for the early shows. 

Blaine regained his balance a few second too late, he tried to chase after Jesse, elbowing every person that was blocking his path, even earning a few insults on the way; Blaine couldn’t care less, not while Jesse  was, somehow, still ahead of him, dodging people left and right as if he was following a pre-written pattern.

A large man bumped his shoulder hard against Blaine’s side, causing him to fall backward into the concrete; a nice woman offered to help him up, taking pity on him, but Blaine got up alone, waving off the woman. He could do it without help, like he always did. 

He took a look at the stream of people all around him: he was like a microscopic cell in the endless sea of New York City and Jesse was nowhere to be seen. Blaine kicked the sidewalk, too frustrated to do anything he walked in the direction of  the theater with his head bowed down. 

He knew Jesse St. James was in town, he knew he would never pass the opportunity to hurt Kurt on his opening night, he also knew he needed to do anything in his power to stop him before it was too late, so he did the only thing he swore to himself he would never do.

“Nine-one-one? Yes, someone is trying to kill my boyfriend.”

***

Kurt had spent the weeks before opening night throwing himself in his work like his life depended on it, and on some level it did. He knew he had to keep thinking about choreographies, and sheet music, and that _ damn _ Cinderella who had no chemistry with him whatsoever. 

Sometimes he wondered why Flynn had decided to give him the role, then he remembered their talk before the beginning of rehearsal that first day, he remembered the way  _ Agony _ had sounded coming from him (a little too much on the high side, the notes stranded in places) and he compared it with the way he sounded after months of practice (sure of himself, his notes steady) and he knew that role was his destiny, his one chance at turning life around.

Quinn had watched as he busied his mind with everything that didn’t concern brown eyes and soft whispers in the middle of the night. She didn’t say anything, not directly; she never took him by the shoulders to sit him down on the couch and give him a wake-up call. She’d just let him be.

In some ways Kurt was grateful for that, because he had needed space after days spent waiting for him to just show up already; but there was a small part of him that had wanted to be called out on his actions, a part of him that needed his best friend to be straight-forward with him and help him.

Who would have ever thought that a boy of a few months could wreck his life so much? When was the moment Kurt had allowed him to have that kind of power? He had promised himself to let his romantic heart back in Ohio, upon a shelf, to gather dust with his old Glee prizes. Turned out it had always traveled with him, safe inside Kurt’s breast pocket.

He thought back to all the little ups and downs the role of Charming had given him while he spied from the backstage as his cast mates performed on stage. The full house scared him more than anything, he couldn’t even see who was there and who wasn’t. He knew his father hadn’t made it (“ _ Kurt, I’m gonna be in hospital. They have to complete my treatment and there is no way they are letting me go, _ ” Burt had said over the phone. Kurt could hear his tears), he knew Quinn was sitting somewhere in the first rows with Mercedes and maybe Santana and Brittany, too, with their little girl. It wasn’t enough.

He needed his father’s warm gaze over him, telling him that everything was going to be okay, he needed his brother’s half-grin to lift him up when he felt like the enormous stage was going to eat him whole; more importantly, even if he denied it, even if he didn’t want to, he needed Blaine to cheer him up and applause for him, bouncing on his feet after the end of his song.

A boy in a black hoodie turned to him after the end of the song, “Mr. Hummel, you’re up next.”

Kurt nodded in acknowledgment, he took his position and waited for the curtain to go up.

***

Blaine entered the theater, against his best judgment, when the show had already begun. He knew Jesse wouldn’t be anywhere else than inside so he needed to take a chance, even if it meant catching a glimpse of Kurt. If he needed to save his life he was going to see him anyway, might as well get it over with.

He was scanning the crowd during an intermission, his eyes kept darting to all sides of the theater, but there was no trace of his target anywhere.

He was just about to damn it all and start shooting blindly with a gun he didn’t have until he caught the guy - which wouldn’t have been the best course of action anyway - when the curtain opened, Blaine looked at the stage by reflex and there he was: Kurt was standing right in the middle of the stage, another boy next to him as they prepared to perform once the assistants had fixed the new set into place.

Blaine froze. He was hoping with all his might that the lights weren’t bright enough for Kurt to see. For a second he forgot the real reason he was there and he took his time watching the two boys play their parts. 

He couldn’t stop looking at Kurt. The man he knew had nothing to do with Charming: the character was self-confident and self-absorbed, no one would have believed that the person who played him had in fact the biggest, kindest heart Blaine had seen. 

The song started, and the audience fell silent; not that anyone had been talking before, but when Kurt opened his mouth to sing Blaine could feel everyone listening, it was like Kurt was casting a spell on them and he was growing to love it every second more than the one before. If it was that intoxicating from where he was standing, he couldn’t imagine what it felt like for the performers. He understood, finally, why Kurt had fallen in love with theater.

The moment was broken when a bang filled the room, and Charming fell down on his knees right as he was belting the final note. A tear of red flew right out of his costume.

Blaine looked at the source of the sound and he saw Jesse fleeting the scene. Seconds after that, he heard an agent shouting, “Police! You’re under arrest.”

_ He would have made it _ , Blaine thought as he was running on the stage, fighting against the sea of people that elbowed each other to reach the exit.

Blaine jumped on the stage screaming, “I’m a doctor! Let me through! Please, I know how to help him!”

The other boy who was playing Rapunzel’s Prince had gone to the other side of the stage to throw up, and maybe - if they were lucky - call an ambulance. The security was already all over Kurt, crowding him, taking away from him the air he so desperately needed. Blaine didn’t know where or how Jesse had hit him, he had been too far away to tell, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t good enough to shot a mortal bullet. Cowards like him never were, Blaine hoped he wasn’t different.

“Shit,” he mumbled as even more people wasted the time they had by creating panic and confusion on the stage. He could see a thin red line behind the wall of assistants that were blocking him from reaching Kurt. “I’m a doctor! Everyone get out!” he screamed harder. 

It looked like everyone had heard him the second time, because they stepped aside so that he could reach Kurt’s side. His body was laying on the hard wood, his eyes were open but he didn’t seem to be looking anywhere in particular, just in the general direction of the ceiling. Blaine looked down, and he saw the blood marking the costume on Kurt’s hip, the pound of crimson getting bigger by the second.  _ Someone has to do something, it could already be too late,  _ the voice in his head whispered words of panic in his ear.

For the first time in his life, Blaine thanked his father for teaching him to be quick on his feet when it came to situations of danger. He ripped a piece of his shirt and used it to put pressure on the wound. 

“Kurt, hey. Can you hear me?” he asked. His voice was soft and tender, nothing like the harsh barking he had used to reach him.

“Bl’n?” He couldn’t speak properly. He was already too weak.

“Yes, it’s me. Look, I know you’re kinda mad at me right now but we have to do this, you can scream at me later.” He turned to the people behind them who were watching the scene without making any movement. “Someone stay here and put pressure on the wound, and someone call an ambulance. Now!” 

“I already did, they’re on their way.” Quinn said from the left side of the circle that had created itself before them as she kneeled down next to him putting her hand over the bloodied cotton to help Blaine. He hadn’t even seen her as he was getting on the stage, not that he was paying much attention to anyone’s faces.

“‘M cold. Tir’d.” 

“No! No, no, no. Kurt, I know you’re tired but you can’t sleep. You can’t close your eyes. You can’t!” Blaine shifted so he was next to Kurt’s face, he held it in his hands and tried to will him to stay awake with his thoughts alone. 

Kurt’s cheeks were stained with the blood already on Blaine’s hands, and his whole face was sweating both from the lights upon the scenes and the cold pain he was feeling at his side. Blaine kept talking to him, but he never answered; knowing Kurt, it was possible he was doing it just out of spite. 

“You have to fight it, sweetie. Come on. Just five more minutes,” Quinn said. She had the shooting tone of a mother, and Kurt managed to put his hand on top of hers in a useless attempt at helping himself.

“‘kay. Fiv’ minutes.”


	6. Wake Up, Alice. It's Time For Tea

The hospital was an awful place. Quinn looked around the waiting room and thought that no one liked being in that place, she just couldn’t imagine feeling anything but unease at being seated in a plastic chair for hours while one waited for news of their loved ones. 

The worst thing was when one was waiting for life-or-death news. 

She was looking down, playing at moving the point of her finger along the patterns on her dress over and over again, when a figure stepped right in front of her and refused to move away even when she ignored him. 

“What do you want, Blaine?” she asked without raising her eyes. Those horrible shoes were proof enough that it was, indeed, him. God, she was spending way too much time with Kurt these days if she was starting to recognize people according to their clothes. 

“Can I-” He took a moment to clear his voice. “Can I sit with you, please?”

“They are not gonna tell you anything, you’re not family and I’m his emergency contact.”

“I was hoping _ you _ might tell me something. You are his emergency contact, as you just said.” He sat on her right side.

“And why would I do that?” She supposed talking to him was another way of passing the time.After all, there wasn’t much else she could do before the doctor opened the doors and told her how the operation had gone. It had been two hours already, which was not a good sign.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “To get me out of your way?”

“I suppose that’s good enough reason.” She was going to tell him anyway, but she liked to pick at him like a cat with its favorite toy. “Heard anything from the police yet?”

“They don’t know I was their source. I told them my boyfriend was under threat and if they ask anyone - including Kurt - there is no boyfriend to speak of. So…”

“Clever, and yet it shows all your self-loathing. Good move.” She chuckled under her breath. The pattern on her dress weren’t all that interesting anymore. She looked at him for the first time since he had decided to take residence on the chair next to her. “What next?”

“Wait in front of the TV for the bulletin and see if they caught him for real. Like normal people do.”

“No, normal people don’t do that.” Quinn took her phone from her bag and showed it to him, already unlocked. “Normal people check the internet to see the news.” She threw it in his lap without care, then she went on to stare at the wall as if she had found some secret in it no one else had noticed.

A dark-haired doctor opened the door and held it so that two nurses could carry Kurt into his room. Blaine noticed the movement with the corner of his eyes and straightened up instantly, removing his gaze from Quinn’s phone. 

He wasn’t completely covered by the white sheet, which meant he wasn’t dead, but his skin looked paler than usual and his eyes were closed so Blaine didn’t manage to feel relaxed just yet. 

The doctor closed the door, looked at Quinn and said, “You need to accompany this man out, he’s not allowed to…”

She interrupted him to put a hand on Blaine’s shoulder and say, “No, he’s okay. He can hear.”

The doctor looked between the two, he glanced at Kurt’s medical file and finally decided those two weren’t too dangerous, so he spoke, “He lost a lot of blood. It was a very close call and we were lucky he’s O positive, but I’m fairly certain he’s gonna be okay. The bullet dodged the spine and every vital organ, it just made a really big mess of his hip.”

“When can we see him?” Blaine got up with a bounce. His eyes were gleaming with unshed tears of fatigue; all the tension of the day had left him worn out and tired, he just wanted to see Kurt and be with him, those few moments he had spent with him were far from a reunion.

The doctor looked at Quinn, she nodded. “In an hour or so. As soon as the  anesthetic we gave him wears off. He’s gonna be a bit… out of it, to put it mildly.” 

Quinn remained behind to ask all the important questions, like, “Will he need any meds once he goes home? How often should he take it? What can I do to help him feel better? When should we come to get the stitches removed?”; in the meantime, Blaine ran outside of the hospital to get a wave of fresh air. He felt like he could finally breathe after everything that had happened, and he needed to feel the wind on his face to figure out if the past few hours hours had been real or just a weird nightmare. 

***

The room was awfully quiet. Usually an hospital was a place that never slept, always filled with the sound of feet moving, and doctors chatting and assistants trying to pass the time; Kurt remembered it well from his mother’s illness, he remembered everything from the color of her bedroom’s walls to the bad cologne her doctor used to wear. 

This time, he lay motionless in his hospital bed, with his ears waiting for something to happen and his eyes closed. He had regained consciousness a few minutes before, but he hadn’t opened his eyes right away, he’d preferred to take in his surroundings with the rest of his senses.

He remembered everything from that evening: the stage, the lights, the emotions that he was feeling, - so intense they were the only thing keeping him from falling in a fit of happy tears - then the shot, the pain and Blaine’s voice calling for him. 

Knowing that made it easy to figure out the rest of the equation, plus he recognized the beeping sound of his heart filtered through the machine at his side and the smell of bleach in the air. 

When the position he was in became too uncomfortable to bear and the pain on his side threatened to make him lose his senses all over again, Kurt was forced to move; he hissed in pain, tightening his eyes closed even further. 

“What? Kurt, what’s wrong?” someone asked from his right side. He was in too much pain to try to figure out who, he just wanted his meds.

“Painkillers… check…” He stopped mid-sentence, and grunted loudly.

Another pair of feet entered the room soon after, called by whoever was with him apparently. In a few seconds the pain stopped.

“Apparently the tube got stuck somehow, he wasn’t getting anything from here.” Kurt figured the nurse was showing the blessed bag that was giving him the meds and injecting them directly into his veins. He could feel the needle in his arm, and he had no intention of tearing it out.

“I’ll go tell the doctor he’s awake,” then nurse said, then there was the sound of heels again, moving further away.

Kurt decided it was finally time to open his eyes; he blinked a few times, trying to adjust to the bright neon lights. He figured it was already night, but he couldn’t see any windows. It took him a few seconds to regain his bearings and sit up. 

There was one thing he hadn’t noticed though: the person on his side, the one who had helped him earlier, was Blaine. He was sitting in a chair next to Kurt’s bed, his hair was free of the gel he had always worn when they were together, and his clothes were far less colorful than usual. He looked worried, probably of Kurt’s reaction.

He had to admit that even if they hadn’t seen each other in a while, Kurt had no reason to be mad at him. He liked to think Blaine had gone to the theater because he still cared, and he wanted to fix whatever had been between them. He wasn’t expecting it, but he was happy Blaine had stayed with him. There was a good chance he had been with Kurt the whole time, waiting for him to wake up.

“Thank you,” Kurt said, completely out of the blue. 

Blaine nodded, but he didn’t dare say a word. 

“You were there, even if I yelled at you, you still remembered, and that means something, so thank you.” 

Blaine took a deep breath, he passed a hand through his hair and huffed. “I - Kurt, what do you think happened back there?”

Kurt blinked, confused. He hadn’t given much thought to the actual reasons behind the shooting. “I don’t know, a crazy person with a gun? Happens everyday.”

“There is something I have to tell you, but you have to promise me that you’ll let me finish.”

***

Quinn was still sitting in the waiting room, doing what was expected of her: waiting.

She saw a nurse eyeing her while she passed on to reach the elevators, but aside from that, no one had told her anything about Kurt’s condition, and she wasn’t going to enter his room as long as Blaine was in there, too. They had too many things to figure out. 

She didn’t know what Blaine knew about her, surely he had figured out that they were both in the same line of work, and she trusted herself to keep the information about her real life as secret as possible.

The doctor who had performed the surgery on Kurt came out of the elevator, and gestured for her to follow him. “He’s awake,” he stated.

Quinn got up and tailed him until they reached the room where Kurt was watching Blaine with his mouth hanging open. For the first time,  she didn’t know what was happening and how to behave around him.

“Kurt? Are you okay?”

He turned around to look at her and the doctor, he shook his head and smiled gently. “Yes, of course. Everything is fine.” 

Quinn moved to the other side of the room, back pushed against the window, while the doctor talked about the operation and checked what was supposed to be checked. 

The air between the three of them was tense, even if her friend was playing the fool. Quinn realized from the way Blaine was looking at him that Kurt knew, and they only way he could have known was because Blaine had told him.

Quinn hadn’t expected that. Anything but the truth. 

“Everything is fine. We will release you tomorrow, you will have to stay here for twenty-four hours, it’s routine,” the doctor explained in a calm voice. Quinn figured it wasn’t easy for Kurt to be reassured, and surely the doctor’s bedside manners weren’t enough. “I’ll check on you tomorrow. If you have any problem you can call for a nurse.” 

Once he had finished with his routine speech, the man nodded and left the room, leaving the three of them alone.

Kurt took a deep breath, he closed his eyes and when he opened them they all could see the tears threatening to spill out. 

“Kurt? Are you ready to talk about it?” Quinn tried, her voice softer than usual.

“Cut me some slack will you? I just learned that my best friend and my ex boyfriend are a hitwoman and hitman, and someone shot me because I took their place in the play. I can’t believe it…” he snapped, but he didn’t have the strength to be angry and scream at everyone, which only made him more frustrated.

“I’ll leave - I - I’ll just leave and you’ll never -” Blaine muttered. He got up, straightened his chair and ran to the door.

“Wait. Blaine.” Kurt only had to whisper for Blaine to stop immediately. “Was it real? At least… at least part of it.”

“All of it,” he replied hoarsely. “It was all real, even if I didn’t know it yet.” He didn’t dare do anything else, he found himself frozen on the spot, hoping for Kurt to tell him they could figure it out, but when he looked away, Blaine knew it was his way to say goodbye. “I know I screwed up,” he started, “And I know there is no way we will ever be together. I’m not made for people. But, you have to know that it was all me, all the time we spent together. You might not know about my past, but you know everything about my present.” 

Blaine stood still, but nothing happened. Kurt didn’t even look him in the eyes.

He closed the door on his way out.

It took Kurt thirty whole seconds - he counted them, each one - before his mask fell apart and the tears started to fall freely from his face. Quinn reached for his shoulder, on instinct, and he allowed himself to fall into the softness of her touch. 

He needed to deal with it, with her, but that night he stopped and pretended, just for a few minutes, that his world wasn’t made of lies and scams. 

***

After that fateful night, Kurt tried to put back all the pieces of his life that had shattered in just a few hours.

He dealt with the police after they took Jesse and brought him to jail the day after the opening. No one ever mentioned Blaine, or his connection with Jesse; as far as Kurt knew, he walked free. 

It ate at his guts, the fact that he had the chance to bring a criminal to justice and he never did. He wanted to, he really wanted to tell the officers how Jesse had hired someone to kill him, that he could help them catch him, but the police never learned about it and they didn’t have to investigate further into Jesse’s life to put him in jail: they had enough evidence, witnesses and motive to put him on trial.

Once the police had left it was already well after midnight, and Kurt was too tired to form any kind of sentence that would make sense, but Quinn was still in his hospital room, and had been there ever since the police had let her go after they asked for her statement. 

Kurt didn’t know if he trusted her to be near his stuff anymore, or near him. 

When she saw him walk inside she run to his side and she tried to help him get back to bed, but he pushed her away.

“I don’t want you here, please leave me alone. I’ll call my dad in the morning.” He still didn’t know why he felt like he had to explain himself to her, not after what he had learned.

Quinn said simply, “You have my number if you need me,” before leaving.

As soon as he had been dismissed from the hospital, Kurt called Quinn and asked her to have coffee with him so they could talk. She filled in the gaps that Blaine had left empty and Kurt sighed, he looked his best friend in the eyes and he told her that he had to move out and go back to Ohio for a while. 

He was broken and confused, the only thing he wanted was to go home and curl up in his bed for the rest of the day.

“Also,” he added after a few seconds of silence, “If you quit your current job, I’d like to see you again when I come back to New York.”

Quinn smiled that sad smile she always wore and she asked, “How can you even look me in the eyes after all this?”

“I can’t right now,” Kurt admitted. “But maybe I’ll be able to, with time.”

“Okay.” Quinn huffed out a cold breath. 

Kurt got up, ready to leave without as much as a goodbye, but she stopped him to ask, “What will you do now?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll teach.”

***

When he showed up at his father’s house a few days later, his baggages trailing behind him like the weight of the past week, Burt had hugged his son and wondered what had happen to make his son to make him leave the Broadway dream.

“I will tell you, dad, I promise. One day,” Kurt said, buried in his father’s embrace.

The day came a week later, when Burt found his son hunched over a cup of coffee at two in the morning. 

“I can’t sleep, dad. I can’t,” Kurt said between sobs. His nose was red, and his eyes were swollen from all the times he had rubbed his hands against them, trying to make the tears stop.

“You gotta tell me what happened,” Burt commanded as he hugged Kurt. IT seemed that all he ever did was hug his son for comfort ever since he had returned from New York.

“It was all a lie, dad. Everything. My boyfriend, my best friend, even my director thought I was just a way to avenge himself. He didn’t choose me because I was good, he chose me to prove a point.”

Burt didn’t know how to answer, how to make his son feel better, so he sat on the chair at Kurt’s left and listened.

“You know what the funny thing is?”

“What?”

“I really thought I could love him.”

Burt never learned the full truth, he never learned about petty revenges, plots to kill his son, and double lives lead by sweet blonde girls who studied at NYU during the day and spent their nights with a knife in their hands. He never learned about the shooting, the way Kurt’s hip had a scar that would heal, at least physically, but would keep him company for the rest of his life otherwise. 

No one ever knew, because Kurt made a promise to himself in the dead of night: everything that happened in those few months was secret and the only witness he wanted was the moon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WE DID IT!  
> OH MY GOD I CAN'T TELL YOU HOW HARD IT'S BEEN TO WRITE THIS LAST CHAPTER. It was so long we had to cut it and make an Epilogue (so don't worry about the end, I'm not that cruel) but everything is done and ready to be published so as soon as lilyvandersteen (whom I thank so much because she always puts up with my crazy writing bursts) and I finish the editing of the last chapter it will be out and the story will be complete! (I've been working on this since January and now it's done ç_ç).


	7. Alice Follows The White Rabbit Again

“Sure you’re ready to go back?” Burt asked for the tenth time since they had reached the airport. 

“Dad, I’m gonna be fine.”

“You sure?”

Kurt looked at his father with a reproving gaze. “I’m not ten anymore.”

“Geez, you are already a teacher,” Burt joked.

“Dad!”

“I just mean that, after everything that happened…”

They had talked a lot about everything Kurt hadn’t said, Burt urged him to tell him more but his son always resisted. Kurt wanted to bury his memories deep inside, away from the front of his mind, and his father wasn’t helping. 

They were standing outside the Lime airport, Kurt had his suitcases and his ticket to New York. He was ready to try again. 

It had been three years since he had left the life he knew in the big city to come back home and try to rebuild himself. He had worked hard to put some money aside (both by working at the Lima Beans part times and helping his dad in the shop) and at the same time he had managed to get a teaching degree that would allow him to work with kindergarteners, which was the perfect age for him because kids got mean when they got older.  

“I know what I’m doing. Besides, I’m moving to Queens. Nothing ever happens in Queens.” Or so Kurt hoped, anyway.

Burt looked at him, his face unreadable; Kurt raised one eyebrow. Burt sighed, he knew that if Kurt put his mind to something there was no way he would change his plans unless he fell head first into failure. 

“You know me and Carole are here if you need us again, kiddo.”

“I know, dad.” 

***

His life run pretty smoothly from then. 

Kurt found himself a routine between his work at the preschool of his district and taking care of his loft, which was old-school and needed a little bit of work; since he didn’t have enough money to pay people to do it, Kurt spent his first year making sure his new house looked more like a home. 

He loved the kids, they were all sweet and everyone took a liking to him. He wasn’t exactly back in the closet (he would never do that, his new life wasn’t worth losing his pride over) but he found that saying he was gay without actually having a partner was easily accepted by people in the upper side, and he didn’t want to date anyway.

He thought about calling Quinn once, two years after his return to New York. He was alone at home, intoxicated by the wine, and he wondered if his ex-best friend was still interested in being his best friend because he was really lonely and all the soccer moms didn’t hold a candle to her. 

He never called, she didn’t either. He remembered what he had told her five years before and figured she hadn’t really turned her life around after all.

It had been eight years from the shooting when Kurt saw a girl with black hair and blue eyes walk in his class during recess, with a paper in her hands that stated she was assigned to him.

“I just transferred here. The principal wanted to accompany me but she had something else to do,” the girl explained, unable to muster a voice above a whisper. 

“It’s okay, honey,” Kurt assured her. He took her file from her tiny hands and urged her to go and play with the other children while he read it. 

Her name was Tiffany Torres. On a little yellow post-it note, the principal had written a hurried warning: “ _ Note: assigned to uncle after death of both parents. Last minute transfer. _ ” 

Kurt had to stop and re-read the sentence at least five times before he managed to read over the bureaucratic parts to make sure everything was in order. It was tasteless to tell him so bluntly of something so important, but then again he had never really liked his boss.

For the next days, he made sure to check on Tiffany more often than he did with the other kids, if only to make sure she wasn’t showing any signs of depression after the death of her parents. 

He found out that the little girl didn’t talk much about her family, but she did talk about her uncle who took her in after the funeral, took care of her and always gave her gifts. 

At the end of the school day, Kurt accompanied the kids to the front of the school and waited with them for their parents to pick them up. Every day, he had two or three kids who would have to wait longer for various reasons, and that day Tiffany got added to the little group. 

He was happy to see that the little girl had befriended a few kids already, and she looked like she enjoyed staying in school. 

Ten minutes after the ring of the bell, Tiffany was the only kid left waiting. She got close to him and took his hand, “Mr. Hummel, that’s my uncle’s car.” She pointed to an old green car that had clearly seen better days. It was pulling over to the other side of the street. 

From the old green car exited no one other than Blaine Anderson, with a pair of brown pants that stopped at his ankles, a white polo and a black and white bowtie. His hair was neatly combed and gelled and he looked openly regretful when he reached for Tiffany without even looking at anyone else.

The girl run to him, and when he picked her up, she hugged his neck with both hands and buried her face in his shoulder. “I’m so sorry I’m late! I’m so, so sorry. The car wouldn't start.”

Kurt was petrified. He didn’t know how to move anymore. The only thing he could do was watch as the man he knew as a calculating hitman cradled his niece’s head with care.

Blaine noticed him, and he too didn’t know what to do in that moment. It was Tiffany who said, “Come, uncle, come meet my teacher!”

“Why - why don’t you go in the car and I’ll talk to your teacher, okay?”

Tiffany nodded. She let her uncle put her on the ground and she ran to the car, sitting in the backseat without so much as a second thought, although she did push herself up to the window, smashing her face against the glass so she could see what was happening between the two men.

Blaine walked as close to Kurt as he thought was comfortable for the both of them (which seemed to be not that close) and he stuttered, “So, teacher now.”

“Is she the daughter of one of…” Kurt gulped back the rest of the sentence.

“My brother. Actually.” 

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Kurt blinked. “How did…?”

“Car accident.”

Kurt nodded and lowered his eyes to the ground. “I didn’t guess, with the different surname.”

“Cooper took mom’s surname when he turned eighteen.”

Kurt smiled bitterly. “I didn’t even know you had a brother.” He kicked a rock that rested just next to his foot, to give himself something to do.

“I had to give up that life. All of it. I wasn’t close with Cooper but Tiffany, she is such a happy child. I couldn’t bring her into that.” Blaine told his story in a single breath; he felt like he needed Kurt to know the truth.

“I’m happy for you.” Kurt was obviously trying to cut the conversation short. After all that had happened eight years ago he had never tried to deal with it, not once had he gone to a therapist, and it had left the betrayal and the anger deep inside his soul, ready to be brought back, but he didn't feel either of these emotions, only a deep longing for what could have been.

Blaine cleared his throat, he turned around and looked at Tiffany, the whole life they had in front of them as a normal family. He smiled. “I guess I’ll see you then, Mr. Hummel.”

“Apparently, you will,” Kurt acknowledged, then he said something that was coming from his very heart, something his mind was painfully against, “And maybe we’ll get coffee sometimes. Catch up.”

Blaine smiled. Breathless, he managed to answer, “Sure, I’d like that.”

**_THE END_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND THAT'S IT.  
> It has been so hard to update I wonder what's wrong with me honestly.  
> One last thank to my beta for making it all happen, the artist for creating the beautiful fanart that inspired me enough to write a 35 pages long story, and you guys for keeping up with me.  
> Much love, xx  
> Elena


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